In 2005, I was getting back into professional wrestling after a lull of a few years being out of the “loop.” Coincidentally, I was also working at the Olive Garden, a job that tends to lead to a lot of fantasizing about lifting a person up by the throat and throwing them through a table.
One of my fellow O.G.ers (a little insider lingo for all of you) was a very muscular guy named Jim who looked exactly like Austin Aries. I don’t mean that he resembled Austin Aries, or that he was a self-important dickhole with a terrible tattoo, the guy was exactly Austin Aries but like four inches taller. He was God’s second attempt at Austin Aries but He got it right the second time. I don’t know if it was just because he so resembled the little fireplug who was at the time the ROH World Champion, but one day we were in the side station and I blurted out, “I came up with a new finishing move,” apropos of nothing.
Well it turns out that this guy not only looked like Austin Aries, he was a trained pro wrestler! And like most independent pro wrestlers, he was WAITING TABLES~ ! Jim informed me that he had wrestled a tour of the South under the name “Jimmy Blue” that was booked by the man who trained him, Manny Fernandez.
Manny Fernandez was one of the top couple hundred wrestlers of the late 1970s and early 1980s and probably one of the most accomplished American-born Hispanic wrestlers of all time, but thanks to the internet, he is largely remembered as the dude who MADE A GUY PUKE BLOOD.
Needless to say, I was impressed by Jimmy Blue’s credentials, and even more impressed by the tale of his tour of the Southern states, accompanied by The Raging Bull Manny Fernandez. Apparently Manny had booked the Jim on the tour, which consisted of a dozen shows over the course of two weeks, from which Jim stood to make a couple thousand bucks. Turns out that most of the promoters weren’t expecting him and he only wound up wrestling about five matches. As for the money, Manny paid him a few hundred dollars and spent every night staying up doing blow with strippers. Jim was a for-real pro wrestler.
Jim and I hung out a lot and one day he asked me if I wanted to go “bump around” with him at “Manny’s place.” Well, having been a lifelong wrestling fan, of course I said yes. Manny was living in a town called Gilroy, where he was working as a high school wrestling coach. I don’t know about you, but I would be somewhat intimidated having my children be taught the finer points of grappling by a fellow who once kneed a guy so hard in the chest that he MADE HIM PUKE BLOOD.
So we set off one fall afternoon to make the half-hour drive to Gilroy. The entire time, Jim is telling me what to do and what not to do when we start bumping, and he had earlier advised me that since I didn’t have proper wrestling shoes, I would bump in my socks and he would wrap my feet and ankles. He’s talking, and I’m excited-scared, because I really REALLY want to get in there and bump, but at the same time I’m terrified that I’ll screw something up or I’ll get frightened and not be able to take a real bump, or even worse, that something like this will happen:
I mean, I’m the type of guy who is wary about hopping down from the bed of a pickup truck or getting on a “down” escalator. How am I expected to take a back body drop? I can give one, sure, as I discovered in a trailer park pool with another indie wrestler one glorious summer afternoon…
i shan’t forget you vicious vic grimes
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the middle part of California, what you’re dealing with is agriculture and lots of it. The stereotype of the tanned and toned surfer is woefully absent here and you are much more likely to encounter a pasty hayseed with tobacco-stained teeth and a “Cowboy Up!” sticker on their F-250. Anyway, Wrangler-butt-nuts-driving aside, you will encounter a great many places in California that look decidedly backwoodsian. In Gilroy, you have a big shopping outlets center, and then miles of garlic fields, dry gray expanses of nothing, and no shortage of unpaved roads. We plummeted into the countryside of Gilroy and several minutes later Jim parked his car outside of a small house with a yellow picket fence, or more accurately, the large, faded barn alongside it.
We got out of the car and I looked around. Across the road from the barn was an enormous expanse of barren field. The house and barn were the only structures on the block. And when I say “block” what I mean to say is “creepy-ass farmland.” It was burgeoning on dusk and I don’t have to tell you that I felt a trifle foolish shuffling up to the door of the barn behind Jim in my sweatpants (or boner-pants, if you will) and my wrapped, besocked feet.
Jim tried the door of the barn but it was locked from the inside. He tried dialing Manny’s girlfriend’s house, explaining that Manny was usually there if he wasn’t at the barn. When that was no use, he started hammering on the door with his meatlike fists, then leaned on it until it opened a sliver, pressed his face to the opening and yelled, “DONNIE!” We stood there in silence while we waited for a response.
“So this is where the ring is, huh?” I am a world genius at deducing.
“Yep.”
“And Manny lives in that house there? Pretty sweet deal.”
Jim followed my gaze to the small, well-kept house with the picket fence.
“What? No, he lives in here.”
I jerked my glance back to the ramshackle barn and regarded its faded plywood architecture. Former World Tag Team Champion Manny Fernandez lived in a barn. Jim hammered and yelled again.
“DONNIE!”
At length, we heard shuffling and a creaky voice asked who was there. Jim identified himself and the door opened in stops and starts to reveal one of the Mole Man’s Moloids. This was Donnie, a tiny, shaking man with a wisp of a mustache and alabaster skin offset by a gin blossomy ruddiness. He regarded us with a look of abject terror which I can only describe as “the monsters are about to steal my bindle.”
“Hey Donnie, we thought we’d come in and bump around for a little while.”
Donnie began wringing his hands and muttering something that very well may have been “oh dear oh dear oh dear” as he led us into the dimly lit structure. We stepped out into the barn proper. There was a flight of stairs and a pipe banister leading up to a second level to the right, which overlooked the barn floor. There in the middle of the floor stood the ring. We walked over and took a gander. The plywood was exposed and the ropes and turnbuckles were lying atop it. The canvas and padding was rolled up on the floor. Jim picked up one of the ropes and looked at it in disgust.
He turned to Donnie. “What’s going on, Donnie?”
“We got red flagged by the city. They cited us and told us to take it down.”
Donnie headed up the stairs and disappeared into a small room. Jim sighed and let me know that this was an example of the carny hustling that was prevalent in pro wrestling, particularly the old-timers. Manny had been trying to get Jim to buy the ring from him, and the threat that he wouldn’t be able to use it would turn up the pressure. Of course he hadn’t gotten red flagged for the ring, the shit was in a fucking barn a mile from anywhere. I was more preoccupied with who the creepy old guy was.
It seems that Donnie was a Vietnam vet who had known Manny for a few decades. He also lived in the barn! In the same room as Manny! Where they GREW WEED
Donnie came backstairs to talk to Jim some more and I realized I had to use the restroom. Taking a gamble that the barn had a bathroom in it, I asked where it might be. They directed me up the stairs and “toward the back”. I headed up the stairs and under a ladder and into a room jumbled with so much junk that it was unbelievable. Three bathtubs propped against the wall. Tires, tools, scrap metal. PINK GIRL’S TRICYCLES. It was about this time that I realized the barn had no windows and very minimal lighting. As I made my way along the wall I was also struck at how much the place resembled the house in the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre film. I could swear I saw a hulking figure looming in the corner sharpening his machete with another, larger machete. As I found the bathroom and took a tinkle, I became aware that I was hanging out in what closely resembled the barn-home of a maniac. A MANIC WHO MADE A GUY PUKE BLOOD OUT OF HIS FACE
Needless to say, a tactful retreat was in order. When I got back downstairs, I interrupted Donnie and I believe my exact words to Jim were, “Hey, do you want to get the fuck out of here?”
So I never got a chance to bump. I also never got a chance to be axe-murdered in a shady-ass barn somewhere in the Gilroy wasteland. Hopefully someday I’ll get a chance to step into a wrestling ring that’s in a well-lit place with a whole bunch of people around. And hopefully Manny Fernandez never reads this and drives to my house to beat the ever-loving shit out of me. I DIDN’T MEAN IT MANNY YOUR HOME WAS VERY WELCOMING PLEASE DO NOT DROP KNEES ONTO ME